Do your kids refuse to eat anything unless it is served with a hearty side of tomato sauce? Or do you, even as an adult, go searching for the tomato sauce bottle whenever you serve up your hot meal each night? Like many condiments, there are many different varieties of tomato sauce available in the supermarket. So today on the Nutrition Couch Product Review, we take a closer look at our favorite tomato sauce varieties to help you choose the healthiest option for your petree.
Hi.
I'm Leanne Wood.
And I'm Sussi Burrow, and as two of.
Australias leading dietitians who specialize in everything evidence, space nutrition, we bring you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites that you can find at the supermarkets. Firstly, Sussi, do the twins eat tomato sauce or do they love to smother their meals in a good old Aussie favorite tomato sauce?
Hi, I'm probably more guilty than them, actually, Like I like tomato sauce with things like a schnitzel or any kind of red meat. So I'm certainly someone who if I don't have it at home, I'll have to go and get some. Like I do like it, and my boys do have it, but they're not obsessed. They're certainly not kids to add it to everything. They like it with a sausage, but you know, I don't want to brag and get people outside. But they're pretty good with
their food, so they don't. If they didn't have it, they wouldn't throw a tantrum the way I would, probably more me. So it's interesting. I've always let them have it. I've never been overly amal about not having it at home, but I'm certainly not someone who serves it with vegetables. It would certainly only be with things like lean sausages or you know, if they're having some chips and a
hamburger out. So it's not something we serve at the table every night by any meansley at it's certainly reserved for meat in general, or maybe a schnitzlot times. So yeah, I did think though that this is a very topical conversation for parents, because I know there is a lot of different options out there, and there's also perception to mosals can be quite high in sugar, and indeed, if your child is having, you know, a good tablespoon. You know that can add up to almost twenty grams of
sugars per day in some cases. So I do think four pair who are trying to often conjole kids to cut back on sauce or have an idea of how much is too much. It's a segment that's quite pertinent, and I would also say there is a growing range. I put the products together this week, and I was a bit sort of pleasantly surprised how many there are out there. But as just a general rule of someone sources, as I would describe to any of my clients, including parents, I have a rule of one sauce per meal and
about a twenty cent piece worth of sauce. So if you are a family who struggles with limiting the sauce, just even getting the kids to measure it before they put it on the plate and say that is it is a great way to teach them control and just not adding more and more. So I think that's a
good guide for all of us. If you're a source lover, whether it's barbecue, sauce, mayonnaise, whatever the condoment is, that you add, measure it and have a set amount rather than just pouring limitless because inevitably, with humans, we all eat what we're served, and over time we tend to serve a whole lot more. So keep that in mind too.
And I definitely don't have a twenty cent piece of tomato sauce with my meals because I am a tomato sauce fan.
Oh you love it. I'm surpr I'm shocked. I know what.
Every time I put it on my Instagram stories, people like what you eat tomato sauce, I'm like, oh man, I can't get enough of it, particularly in my eggs. I'm a big Yeah, I love a little bit of tomato sauce with my eggs. What's bad, isn't it?
You know someone and then they have tomato sauce with their eggs.
Jeez, if it's like it's just like a like a because I don't like the scrambled eggs because I found the cream quite rich. So if I'm having a little bit of poached eggs or something. Ever since I've been pregnant, I can't handle runny poached eggs anymore. Like I just I look at them and I instantly feel nauseous, like they have to be part of like hard poach, and I just find that they're just a little bit more dry, so that on a bit of toast is just a little bit too dry for me. So I found that
ever since I was pregnant, I really am. I'm a big fan of having my eggs with the stem tomato sauce.
It's not role modeling very well for me, or is it. You're gonna have to get David to role model there? Goodness, As I said, I'm sure he's not really a sauce person. Grabbing on about my own kids. And here's you a dirty sauce eater. There you go. You heard it here, First Land fitness dietician tomato sauce. He loves a good tomato sauce. Well, I hope you're choosing one of the good ones. I'll tell you the ones I've chosen.
Shy oh, absolutely, mine's on the list.
So the first one I've gone to is the Coals. Now this is I hadn't seen this before actually, and there's a thirty percent sugar reduced tomato sauce. It retails for just a dollar fifty, so that's really quite cheap compared to some of them. So per serve, which is twenty meal, which is a tablespoon worth and hence good to be measuring to get an idea of actually how much you're using. It's got just shy of one hundred killo jewels, which is about twenty twenty. Is that twenty
five calories? No, not even twenty that twenty calories per serve. It's right there in front of me. Hardly any protein, no fat, which is what you would expect. Carbohydrate. Now this is interesting, we am because it lists almost five gams of carbo hydrate per serve, but no sugar. Now to me, that label is in trouble because it should have sugar just because it's referring to it let alone. It's I thought it was a legislative requirement to list sugar. So that's a bit dodged on the label calls you
need to fix that asap. I will assume that most of that carbo hydrode is sugar myself. Is that a fair call? Am? I?
Being? Yeah, sugar is the second ingredient, and I think the park with that carbo hydrode is sugar, and it's not naturally occurring. It's added or some of it's natural.
Yeah, sodium just shy one hundred milligrams, which is pretty insignificant really if you're sticking to that serve. But if you're someone who's adding two or three serves of that per day, you're up around three hundred milligrams of sodium. Now, we suggest people consume less than two thousand milligrams of sodium per day for good health. So it's it's low, but it's not insignificant if you're using large volumes, particularly
for kids. So the sodium and the salt is relative. Now, the ingredients here tomato pure seventy nine percent, which is very low for a source. That means twenty percent is made up of other crap, which is a bit of a concern. Sugar fructose, So two serves of sugar in there are thickener may start. Salt acidity regulator is natural flathing, some color which I don't like either, and some spice xtrac. Now my concern here, Lyanne, is this is the one
that's got thirty percent less sugar. Imagine how much the other one must have because that's you know, that means that the regular one is coming in it, you know, maybe six seven grams of sugar per serve. So even though this is what I would have a masquerade is a bit health haloy, it's not. It's definitely wouldn't be my choice. I wouldn't be buying that because straight away I don't like sugar on the label of my tomato
sauce at all, let alone color. So I'm actually really disappointed, and I would say no, I don't think it's a healthy product at all. And as I said, I hate to see the full strength one. Have you seen this before?
I think it is a newer product. I'm just trying to look. Cols is very ticky. They don't put a great deal of the nutritional information online. I do find that Woo Wors is a lot better. I can't actually find the sugar content in the normal Coals one. But let's just have a look at the standard wool Worst home brand three point one grams of sugars perserve, so the carbo hydrate's about three point seven grams in the standard wol Worst one. So probably a little bit healthier
the wor Worst one than the Coals one. Is they've got tomato pure seven, but.
This is their coals a healthier one, you know what I mean? I just don't understand the place of this product when it's still got quite a significant amount added sugar and not low in sugars, so it's definitely not my Yeah, that was a real eye opener for me to see this product. Yeah, so the next one I've chosen is the one that actually skewed my interest in doing. This is a segment for us because I went down it was probably for me. I went down to our
Little Bullies, which is really close. It's one of those little Metro ones, and we hadn't we didn't have any tomato sauce, and I was really upset. I couldn't have my dinner without it, So I quickly skewed it down there. And they didn't have the brand I normally gets, and that's very disconcerting I find. So I sort of had a look at some other ones and this was a
Master Foods tomato sauce with hidden vegetables. Now, if I'm looking at a product that wouldn't normally have vegetables in it and then they food companies put veggies in, I sort of think I'll come on, like really, it's like when you I don't know, buying process meat and they say, oh, it's got to serve a veggies in it, like, it
just doesn't go together. So I myself wouldn't buy a tomato sauce with veggies usually, But I had a closer look at this one for three fifty, so you know, quite a bit more expensive than the home brand one. The calories and the Killer Duels. This is a serve ony of fifteen, so it's slightly less on the label, which is going to lower the numbers, so that's relevant too.
They're about a quarter less than the typical serve, which is a whole tablespoon, So say fifty four Killer Jules, you add twenty five percent to that, it's about seventy so pretty similar. Same with the protein as you would expect. The fat's very low. Now this is what I likely am toe point seven grams of carbohydrate and then just two point four grams of sugars, so almost half what we think we were getting in that lower sugar product. But as I said, we can't actually accurately report that
given it's not on the label. Needs to be fixed where it's just estimating. And the sodium again is oh my ey, is it not great? Ninety milligram, so very similar again, so we look at the ingredients here. Tomatoes are seventy three percent with a tomato paste, which we know is very rich source of lycopenes, so very good
for prostates as well. It does have sugar in there, and then carrot pole so four percent, carrot pole sweet potato pure five five percent, so you're getting sort of another nine percent vegetables which takes the vegetable content of that up to eighty two percent. And there's a been onion as well some spice. So certainly as a parent, as a tomato sauce eater myself, I would buy that product because I was pleasantly surprised. One it was the lowest sugar variety I could find on the limited number
I had access to. But I actually thought that was really quite a strong profile from an ingredient perspective as well. So I thought that was a great product, and I hadn't been across it before. So yeah, that's the master food tomato sauce with hidden vegies. It's probably one I would buy for that reason. What do you think am I missing something?
I don't know? Honestly, If your kids are getting their veggies through the tomato sauce. Guys, you're doing it wrong. Sure they might add a little bit of extra, but I think in the grand scheme of things, it's very very minimal. So I think for the cost, I mean, it's not a bad product, Bill, it's a very good product. But I think I wouldn't be leaping off the shelves to buy it. I think I just prefer the sort
of standard lower sugar loaves. Or does it taste or RD does it taste like normal tomato sauce?
Yeah it tasted, Yeah, it tasted a bit sort of richer. I thought, you know, for eighty percent veggies versus seventy for extra ten percent, if you were going to buy a non home brand variety, you know I would buy it again. But you're right. There are also varieties with lower salt and sugar. So let's have a look at one of those.
But I'll i'll just with the marketing debt. I'll just add in here one final point with the Master Food's one. And the marketing does sort of say it's got five serves a veggie in every bottle, but that to me my brain first leaving yes as the veggies, it's quite misleading because it's in the entire bottle, and there's what how many servings per bottle suits you about?
Well, usually about twenty twenty five.
Oh actually no, it says on the nutrition level thirty three servings per pack. So out of thirty three servings, you're getting five servings of veget So this isn't something that we're actually looking to boost our vegetable intake with. If you guys are getting vegetables from tomato sauce or absolutely doing it wrong. But you know it's not good to hurt you, absolutely not. So it gets a I don't know, four stars from me, Susie.
Okay, yeah, and that's that's a good point. You know, I've probably been worried a little bit. It's like was love at first sight, but now I'm seeing the true you know, you're much more reasonable. So that's fair enough. Now it's a fair call because you're right. The sodium's not low on it, Like ninety milligrams is not a low sodium tomato sauce fhific because that's actually higher than that lead like that'd be over one hundred milligrams of
sodium per serve. Given that that's soy quoting a fifteen meal serve size.
Fifteen meal serve is a very small Yeah, there's no one in I don't think Australia that uses fifteen meals of tomato sauce on their meals.
Yes, so you're right. It's not overly low in sodium, which is the other thing you'd be looking at from a sauce. So yeah, no, you're right. Okay, So the last one I chose was sort of a mix of hybrid. It was fifty percent less added sugar and salt. So I hadn't seen this product before either. This is the Heinz tomato ketchup. This is the one I like, Oh, this is one You're like, okay, these were all coals. I sort of just had to scout around. So this
is again a fifteen meal serve. I guess they're saying that a full heap tablespoons kind of twentyms versus a sort of level one it's about fifteen, So maybe that's how they're rationalizing that energy. Just forty kilo DULs so definitely significantly less fewer calories just ten calories per serve than the other varieties we've spoken about. So that's about half the other's little protein, little fat as expected. Now just true point true grams of carbohydrate and just one
point eight grams of sugar. So this is actually the lowest tomato sauce I could find. Sugar wires, dietary fiber, sort of insignificant oun product is and then the sodium sixty milligrams, So the sodium is a tad lighter. It's, you know, these very insignificant amounts of sodium. You know, comparing really sixty to ninety sodium is not really that big a difference, to be honest. The profile concentrated tomatoes, they're not giving us a percentage on that, which is a bit frustrating as well.
At the bottom of it, so it's contains seventy nine percent concentrated tomato. I say, where does it say that it's so nearly eighty percent tomorrow? Why does it say that just at the bottom of the ingredient list.
Oh, yeah, the bottom of the ingredient list. Okay, there you go, vinegar, sugar, salt. So these incivinia to give it that tang, spice and her x tracks, they are using a sweetener, so a bit controversial. So they're putting the sweetness back in with some stevia.
So's it's natural sweetness. Yeah, I don't mind that.
Yeah, spice, Yeah, So you know, I think that if you were splitting hairs, that's slightly lower in sugars. It does have a sweetener in it, natural sweetener, it's not that much lower and sodium. Really, I think that's not a bad product. I think depending on flavor. You said you like that one.
I do. From a flavor perspective, this one's my favorite, and it's tomato ketchup, not tomato sauce. So I actually think this is a really nice, rich, concentrated form of It tastes wise and I feel that you need to use less because it is nice and concentrated as well. I like the little bit of the tang from the vinegar as well. So this is the one that I prefers my preference in terms of tomato sauces. And again I think, you know, i'd probably give it four four
and a half dollars out of five. It's not like, I mean, this probably is one of the better products on market, but whenever they give five stars to something like tomato sauce, but it is sort of definitely my favorite in the brand that I urge towards because I like the ketch up or the concentratedness of it, so I find that I use a little bit less than if I was using like a standard tomato sauce.
So I think, really, if you're happy to spend a little bit more on a brand name either of those, I would be fine with the hit in veggie ones. I think any of the lower sugar slash lower salt options are good nutritionally, but it is worth having a quick scan because yeah, there is a big difference. Then. Some of the supermarket brands, for example, had upwards of five grams of sugars per serve, so in the case of spending a lot less, you're getting a lot more sugar.
So if you're really trying to keep an eye on your kid's food intake, and first of all, limit the portions, you know, sort one source per meal and get them to start measuring it so they learn to use it sparingly rather than smothering it on And that's probably the best take home message overall. And if you want to get one that's slightly healthier, yes you can get ones that are lower in sugar and slightly lower in sodium.
Just the final point I make is for men in particular cook tomato, so that what you would find in tomato paste tomato sauce has the benefit of a very concentrated amounts of lykopene, a very powerful anti cancer molecule, particularly associated with a reduction in the risk of prostate cancer. So a little bit of good quality sauce or tomato paste once a day is not a bad idea from a health perspective, as long as you're not smothering fatty sausages in levers of tomato sauce.
And with your tomatoes when you're cooking them, you activate the likipene more if you're using a quality extraversion olive oil with that as well the end you're getting the double powerful antioxidant profile from the fact to help absorb some of the lycopene as well.
Great point. All right, Well, that brings us to the end of the Nutrition Couch product review. If you haven't done so already, we would love to see you subscribed, and we would love it even more if you left us a five star review in the iTunes Purple app. We'd love to hear from you, particularly on Sundays and Wednesday mornings when we drop and we'd love any feedback on the Nutrition Couch podcast and we will see you this Sunday morning for our regular weekly drop.
Thanks for listening, Catch you Tomato sauce lovers next week. The Second Stand, The Second stat